Bob Dylan wins a Pulitzer. He gets a special citation "for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power".
Washington Post is the biggest winner with a haul of six Pulitzers, the second-most any newspaper has won in a single year. The New York Times won seven in 2002.
The New York Times reports:
The Post won the prestigious public service award for revealing the neglect of wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The Pulitzer citation named two Post reporters, Dana Priest and Anne Hull, and a photographer, Michel du Cille.
Pulitzers also went to The Post’s Jo Becker and Barton Gellman, who won the national reporting award for documenting the power and secrecy wielded by Vice President Dick Cheney, and to Steve Fainaru, who won the international reporting prize for his examination of private security contractors in Iraq.
A Post economics columnist, Steven Pearlstein, won the prize for commentary, Gene Weingarten won the feature writing award for a long article in The Post’s Sunday magazine on a world-famous violinist playing incognito for subway riders, and the paper’s staff won in the breaking news category for its coverage of the mass killing at Virginia Tech.
The New York Times took two awards, including one for Amy Harmon, who won the explanatory journalism for her reporting on the mixed blessings offered by new world of genetic testing.
Walt Bogdanich and Jake Hooker of The New York Times, won an investigative reporting prize for their articles about counterfeit and toxic drugs from China. Mr. Bogdanich’s Pulitzer Prize is his third.
Three of this year’s journalism awards, including both prizes for photography, went to organizations that had never won Pulitzers before.
Adrees Latif of Reuters won the prize for breaking news photography, for his pictures of a man fatally wounded in a street demonstration in Myanmar. Preston Gunnaway of The Concord Monitor in New Hampshire won for feature photography, for chronicling a family coping with fatal illness.
Michael Ramirez of Investor’s Business Daily won the award for editorial cartooning. It was the first Pulitzer Prize for his newspaper, and the second for Mr. Ramirez, who won in 1994 with The Commercial Appeal of Memphis.
Mark Feeney, visual arts critic for The Boston Globe, won the prize for criticism. The prize for local reporting went to David Umhoefer of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, for uncovering a local government practice of skirting tax laws to pad employees’ pensions.
The Pulitzer board decided not to award a prize this year for editorial writing.
The arts
In the arts, the Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to Junot Diaz, a Dominican-born writer, for his first novel, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” a tale of a nerdy aspiring science fiction author.
Tracy Letts won the award for drama, for “August: Osage County,” a fiercely funny tragedy about a family’s disintegration.
In the history category, Daniel Walker Howe won for “What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848.” John Matteson won for biography, for “Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father.”
The prize for nonfiction writing went to Saul Friedlander for his book, “The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945.”
Two prizes were awarded in the poetry category, one to Robert Hass, for “Time and Materials,” and one to Philip Schultz for “Failure.”
David Lang won the award for music, for his composition, “The Little Match Girl Passion.” And a special Pulitzer went to Bob Dylan, citing the mark he has made on the culture over decades.
About the Pulitzers
The BBC explains:
Pulitzer prizes are awarded annually by Columbia University on the recommendation of an 18-member board.
The prizes recognise achievements in journalism, letters, drama and music.
Each Pulitzer carries a $10,000 cash prize, except for the most prestigious - the Public Service award - which wins the recipient newspaper a gold medal.
Named after newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, who died in 1911, the accolades were first awarded in 1917, and 2008's awards are the 92nd of their kind.
